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27 Jan

How GitHub Can Help You To Improve As A Web Developer

by TBSCategories: News

Just like everybody else at some point, I knew GitHub was a way to gain access to open source projects. It was the place which allowed me to grab the necessary files for my websites, read the documentations or raise issues. During the past 2 years I have discovered it is in fact a fantastic tool to learn and keep growing as a developer.

GitHub As A Learning Tool

It all started one day when I decided to use GitHub to open source my own small projects. I created my first jQuery plugin (fullPage.js) and almost without realising, the project started to get stars and forks. Within just a few months it reached thousands of stars, in a year a friend saw me in the list of trending developers at GitHub and in two years the project reached the top 50 most starred and forked projects on GitHub on JavaScript language.

By that time companies like Google, Sony, Facebook, EA and British Airways were using my own scripts and even printed magazines such as Web Designer (UK) had articles about them – not precisely what I had anticipated when I initially decided to upload my small project.

What have I learned through it? Here are a few things:

You don’t have to be a genius!!

Creating some impact on the internet does not require you to be a genius. Focus on making something useful for yourself and for others and people will eventually start valuing it if it’s good.

What you really need to have is an original idea, desire to make it happen and enthusiasm.

Take a look at some popular projects on Github and you’ll realise that many of them are just a good idea in a good moment.

You can actually change the world (a bit at least)

One of the first things I realised is how easy it is for us nowadays to make an impact on other people around the world. We programmers are in a very special position which allows us to easily share our own creations with others separating us from many other fields.

We lack all those real world obstacles. We do not need advertising, partners or even contacts to launch something. We can do it by ourselves from home, and if it is good, it will come to light by itself.

This is something we have to take advantage of. There are no risks involved – just consider it as an investment of time and effort.

You will learn from others

Although it is well known that open source projects don’t usually have many volunteer contributors, sometimes only a few tips are necessary to help you improve your code and learn from it.

Nobody will rewrite the whole program for you, but the few tips, suggestions and pull requests they do submit can help you to see things from another perspective, question your own code and discuss what the best solution is.

By just using the GitHub issues forum, users can often contribute by providing new ideas and enhancements, detecting bugs and even opening you to new ways of working and testing.

You will learn how to provide support

When I started my first project I had no experience whatsoever of providing support to any program in the long run.

• After a while I learned the importance of the version number and the semantic versioning specifications. Having it in your files will save you from losing time when people report solved bugs or missing functionality. I found it very useful to detect when bugs were introduced and users, on the other hand, found having a change-log quite useful to see whether or not they should update to the latest version.
• Documentation will become your friend when answering questions regarding the usage of your software. You’ll get tired of answering the same questions again and again. You’ll see the importance of having good documentation and ideally one that can easily be referenced by URL. From now on you’ll value others’ documentations more.
• It is important to isolate the problem before spending time on it. In my case, I usually ask users to reproduce the problem in jsfiddle or codepen. Sometimes the problem is not in your own application. In my case, being a JavaScript plugin, I had many users reporting problems which had nothing to do with the plugin itself but with an error somewhere else in their site or even in another component.
• Being able to reproduce your user’s setup and environment is a very important factor when it comes to testing and debugging. For browser testing I made use of Browserstack although I still had trouble providing better support for some Windows touch devices.

You will learn the basics of package managers

If you have a web oriented project you’ll probably want to add it in some package managers such as npm, bower, npmjs…

If you haven’t used them before, as it was in my case when I started my first project, this will be a great opportunity to motivate (or force) yourself to learn more about them and potentially start using them from now on!

You will learn the importance of testing

And more so if you haven’t created any tests! Then is when you’ll realise how convenient it would be to be able to release a new version being confident it will not break any of your application’s functionality.

Personally I committed this mistake and now I’ve learned the lesson!

It is not easy to test some projects, but any test we can provide will be useful in the long run.

You can get the motivation to improve

It’s not that we need to find an excuse to code properly, but we are all lazy sometimes and go for the first solution we have in mind: we forget about old browsers, avoid thinking about touch devices, do not put enough importance on performance etc.

If people get to know your project, chances are you pay a bit more attention to your own code. We don’t usually like getting bad feedback about our projects and having people complaining about performance, compatibility issues or crashes. As it happen with sports, having someone to push you can get the best out of you.

Remember we want our project to be useful, people complaining is a sign that there is room for improvement.

Conclusion: You can use it as your portfolio

They sound more like a thing for web designers, photographers or models, but portfolios are just places to show our skills in a particular topic and GitHub is just perfect for us!

Not only interviewers, potential colleagues and recruiters will be able to see the core of some of your work, but having open source side projects will reflect a passion in your field, which is something they value very much. I would even say you can potentially use it as a tool to attract more clients.

Onextrapixel – Web Design and Development Online Magazine

26 Jan

How GitHub Can Help You To Improve As A Web Developer

by TBSCategories: News

Just like everybody else at some point, I knew GitHub was a way to gain access to open source projects. It was the place which allowed me to grab the necessary files for my websites, read the documentations or raise issues. During the past 2 years I have discovered it is in fact a fantastic tool to learn and keep growing as a developer.

GitHub As A Learning Tool

It all started one day when I decided to use GitHub to open source my own small projects. I created my first jQuery plugin (fullPage.js) and almost without realising, the project started to get stars and forks. Within just a few months it reached thousands of stars, in a year a friend saw me in the list of trending developers at GitHub and in two years the project reached the top 50 most starred and forked projects on GitHub on JavaScript language.

By that time companies like Google, Sony, Facebook, EA and British Airways were using my own scripts and even printed magazines such as Web Designer (UK) had articles about them – not precisely what I had anticipated when I initially decided to upload my small project.

What have I learned through it? Here are a few things:

You don’t have to be a genius!!

Creating some impact on the internet does not require you to be a genius. Focus on making something useful for yourself and for others and people will eventually start valuing it if it’s good.

What you really need to have is an original idea, desire to make it happen and enthusiasm.

Take a look at some popular projects on Github and you’ll realise that many of them are just a good idea in a good moment.

You can actually change the world (a bit at least)

One of the first things I realised is how easy it is for us nowadays to make an impact on other people around the world. We programmers are in a very special position which allows us to easily share our own creations with others separating us from many other fields.

We lack all those real world obstacles. We do not need advertising, partners or even contacts to launch something. We can do it by ourselves from home, and if it is good, it will come to light by itself.

This is something we have to take advantage of. There are no risks involved – just consider it as an investment of time and effort.

You will learn from others

Although it is well known that open source projects don’t usually have many volunteer contributors, sometimes only a few tips are necessary to help you improve your code and learn from it.

Nobody will rewrite the whole program for you, but the few tips, suggestions and pull requests they do submit can help you to see things from another perspective, question your own code and discuss what the best solution is.

By just using the GitHub issues forum, users can often contribute by providing new ideas and enhancements, detecting bugs and even opening you to new ways of working and testing.

You will learn how to provide support

When I started my first project I had no experience whatsoever of providing support to any program in the long run.

• After a while I learned the importance of the version number and the semantic versioning specifications. Having it in your files will save you from losing time when people report solved bugs or missing functionality. I found it very useful to detect when bugs were introduced and users, on the other hand, found having a change-log quite useful to see whether or not they should update to the latest version.
• Documentation will become your friend when answering questions regarding the usage of your software. You’ll get tired of answering the same questions again and again. You’ll see the importance of having good documentation and ideally one that can easily be referenced by URL. From now on you’ll value others’ documentations more.
• It is important to isolate the problem before spending time on it. In my case, I usually ask users to reproduce the problem in jsfiddle or codepen. Sometimes the problem is not in your own application. In my case, being a JavaScript plugin, I had many users reporting problems which had nothing to do with the plugin itself but with an error somewhere else in their site or even in another component.
• Being able to reproduce your user’s setup and environment is a very important factor when it comes to testing and debugging. For browser testing I made use of Browserstack although I still had trouble providing better support for some Windows touch devices.

You will learn the basics of package managers

If you have a web oriented project you’ll probably want to add it in some package managers such as npm, bower, npmjs…

If you haven’t used them before, as it was in my case when I started my first project, this will be a great opportunity to motivate (or force) yourself to learn more about them and potentially start using them from now on!

You will learn the importance of testing

And more so if you haven’t created any tests! Then is when you’ll realise how convenient it would be to be able to release a new version being confident it will not break any of your application’s functionality.

Personally I committed this mistake and now I’ve learned the lesson!

It is not easy to test some projects, but any test we can provide will be useful in the long run.

You can get the motivation to improve

It’s not that we need to find an excuse to code properly, but we are all lazy sometimes and go for the first solution we have in mind: we forget about old browsers, avoid thinking about touch devices, do not put enough importance on performance etc.

If people get to know your project, chances are you pay a bit more attention to your own code. We don’t usually like getting bad feedback about our projects and having people complaining about performance, compatibility issues or crashes. As it happen with sports, having someone to push you can get the best out of you.

Remember we want our project to be useful, people complaining is a sign that there is room for improvement.

Conclusion: You can use it as your portfolio

They sound more like a thing for web designers, photographers or models, but portfolios are just places to show our skills in a particular topic and GitHub is just perfect for us!

Not only interviewers, potential colleagues and recruiters will be able to see the core of some of your work, but having open source side projects will reflect a passion in your field, which is something they value very much. I would even say you can potentially use it as a tool to attract more clients.

Onextrapixel – Web Design and Development Online Magazine

26 Jan

How GitHub Can Help You To Improve As A Web Developer

by TBSCategories: News

Just like everybody else at some point, I knew GitHub was a way to gain access to open source projects. It was the place which allowed me to grab the necessary files for my websites, read the documentations or raise issues. During the past 2 years I have discovered it is in fact a fantastic tool to learn and keep growing as a developer.

GitHub As A Learning Tool

It all started one day when I decided to use GitHub to open source my own small projects. I created my first jQuery plugin (fullPage.js) and almost without realising, the project started to get stars and forks. Within just a few months it reached thousands of stars, in a year a friend saw me in the list of trending developers at GitHub and in two years the project reached the top 50 most starred and forked projects on GitHub on JavaScript language.

By that time companies like Google, Sony, Facebook, EA and British Airways were using my own scripts and even printed magazines such as Web Designer (UK) had articles about them – not precisely what I had anticipated when I initially decided to upload my small project.

What have I learned through it? Here are a few things:

You don’t have to be a genius!!

Creating some impact on the internet does not require you to be a genius. Focus on making something useful for yourself and for others and people will eventually start valuing it if it’s good.

What you really need to have is an original idea, desire to make it happen and enthusiasm.

Take a look at some popular projects on Github and you’ll realise that many of them are just a good idea in a good moment.

You can actually change the world (a bit at least)

One of the first things I realised is how easy it is for us nowadays to make an impact on other people around the world. We programmers are in a very special position which allows us to easily share our own creations with others separating us from many other fields.

We lack all those real world obstacles. We do not need advertising, partners or even contacts to launch something. We can do it by ourselves from home, and if it is good, it will come to light by itself.

This is something we have to take advantage of. There are no risks involved – just consider it as an investment of time and effort.

You will learn from others

Although it is well known that open source projects don’t usually have many volunteer contributors, sometimes only a few tips are necessary to help you improve your code and learn from it.

Nobody will rewrite the whole program for you, but the few tips, suggestions and pull requests they do submit can help you to see things from another perspective, question your own code and discuss what the best solution is.

By just using the GitHub issues forum, users can often contribute by providing new ideas and enhancements, detecting bugs and even opening you to new ways of working and testing.

You will learn how to provide support

When I started my first project I had no experience whatsoever of providing support to any program in the long run.

• After a while I learned the importance of the version number and the semantic versioning specifications. Having it in your files will save you from losing time when people report solved bugs or missing functionality. I found it very useful to detect when bugs were introduced and users, on the other hand, found having a change-log quite useful to see whether or not they should update to the latest version.
• Documentation will become your friend when answering questions regarding the usage of your software. You’ll get tired of answering the same questions again and again. You’ll see the importance of having good documentation and ideally one that can easily be referenced by URL. From now on you’ll value others’ documentations more.
• It is important to isolate the problem before spending time on it. In my case, I usually ask users to reproduce the problem in jsfiddle or codepen. Sometimes the problem is not in your own application. In my case, being a JavaScript plugin, I had many users reporting problems which had nothing to do with the plugin itself but with an error somewhere else in their site or even in another component.
• Being able to reproduce your user’s setup and environment is a very important factor when it comes to testing and debugging. For browser testing I made use of Browserstack although I still had trouble providing better support for some Windows touch devices.

You will learn the basics of package managers

If you have a web oriented project you’ll probably want to add it in some package managers such as npm, bower, npmjs…

If you haven’t used them before, as it was in my case when I started my first project, this will be a great opportunity to motivate (or force) yourself to learn more about them and potentially start using them from now on!

You will learn the importance of testing

And more so if you haven’t created any tests! Then is when you’ll realise how convenient it would be to be able to release a new version being confident it will not break any of your application’s functionality.

Personally I committed this mistake and now I’ve learned the lesson!

It is not easy to test some projects, but any test we can provide will be useful in the long run.

You can get the motivation to improve

It’s not that we need to find an excuse to code properly, but we are all lazy sometimes and go for the first solution we have in mind: we forget about old browsers, avoid thinking about touch devices, do not put enough importance on performance etc.

If people get to know your project, chances are you pay a bit more attention to your own code. We don’t usually like getting bad feedback about our projects and having people complaining about performance, compatibility issues or crashes. As it happen with sports, having someone to push you can get the best out of you.

Remember we want our project to be useful, people complaining is a sign that there is room for improvement.

Conclusion: You can use it as your portfolio

They sound more like a thing for web designers, photographers or models, but portfolios are just places to show our skills in a particular topic and GitHub is just perfect for us!

Not only interviewers, potential colleagues and recruiters will be able to see the core of some of your work, but having open source side projects will reflect a passion in your field, which is something they value very much. I would even say you can potentially use it as a tool to attract more clients.

Onextrapixel – Web Design and Development Online Magazine

15 Aug

The ABC of Email Management: 15 Email Tools and Tricks That Will Help You Improve Your Productivity

by TBSCategories: News

This article has been contributed by Jenny Richard.

We all wish we had more time to finish our daily workload, but the fact is, you can never have enough time at work, especially when your inbox is always full.

Email management is one of the most time consuming tasks. It is also strenuous and sometimes quite boring. However, even with these downsides, the usefulness of email as a communication tool at work cannot be understated. What you remain to do then, is to learn to manage your emails so that you stay productive throughout the day.

There are a few handy tools (hacks, if you may) that can assist to make your email management easier. These tools and tricks fall in three broad categories and they include:

A. Restrict

One of the easiest ways to manage your emails is to control your actions on new emails. You can do so as follows:

1. Restrict email response to certain times

To avoid spending your whole day reading countless emails, you can use add-ons like Leech Block on Firefox, or Stay Focused on Chrome, to restrict access to your inbox to certain times a day. When you set your schedule, and stick to it, you will find that you are getting through a lot more work within a few hours.

You should also remember to disable all notifications on all your gadgets, so that they don’t distract you.

2. Work with time limits

Besides just creating a schedule for reading your emails, you should also limit the time you take attending to your emails.

Using a Chrome add-on such as Time Warp will help to stick to your time restrictions. Time Warp is great because when your set time limit for the day has elapsed, it will not allow you to access your inbox again, but will always redirect you to your documents in Google docs.

A reasonable time for attending to emails is between 1 hour and 2 hours.

3. Unsubscribe from unnecessary services

Nowadays, everyone wants you to subscribe to newsletter service or such other email subscription. If you notice that you never read any of these subscriptions, you should unsubscribe because they are only adding clutter to your inbox.

When you stop getting too many subscription emails, you will notice all your important emails a lot easier. Use Unroll.me to clean up your email subscriptions.

4. Send short replies

Don’t waste time sending lengthy email replies. Take some time to think about one to three lines that will summarize all the important points you want to pass across. This will save you and the recipient a lot of time.

5. Take time to respond

Do not be hasty with your email replies. When you take time to reply to emails, you will often measure your replies. You will also address all the points raised by the sender.

When you respond immediately, you are likely to get caught up in a long chain of received and sent emails, and this will only waste your time.

6. Avoid sending unnecessary emails

Do not hold conversations on email, such as discussions on planned meetings, as they often tend to be open-ended and will result in long emails.

Walk to your colleague’s desk and agree on a suitable meeting time or use a messaging app, then when you both agree, you can send one email to book a meeting.

7. Clear your inbox daily

If you work within deadlines, you can clear all your emails in your inbox at the end of each day and at the end of each week.

All you need to do is to prioritize. Reply to all those emails you deem urgent and archive or delete the rest. If you start your day with yesterday’s backlog, you will get overwhelmed before the week is over.

B. Automate

Another aspect of email management involves building processes that will allow you to act on tasks originating from your inbox a lot faster. To do this, you have to automate your mail process.

8. Recycle your responses

If you find that some of the emails in your inbox are similar on a large extent, reply to them using responses you have already sent to the other almost similar emails.

You could save a couple of minutes per email in this way.

9. Use auto-respond

Customize automatic responses that you can send for different types of emails. A good auto-responder to use is one informing the sender of when they can expect a response from you. This will ease off any unnecessary pressure.

10. Sort emails into folders

All the emails that you get will fall into these groups:

• Emails that do not need you to act on them
• Emails that require a response
• Emails that require a response and action

You can move these three categories in different folders to better prioritize the last 2 categories. Also, set up filters that will sort your email by content, subject line and sender.

11. Track emails that have been opened

If you are sending cold emails and you want to know whether your prospects have read them, you can use software such as bananatag to help you decide which prospects to pursue more aggressively and which ones to de-prioritize.

12. Automate your follow up process

There are tools, such as followup.cc, that will automate all your follow-up tasks. If you don’t automate, you are bound to forget about important projects.

13. Incorporate email with other software

A tool like Zapier can help you to better track emails related to projects, by integrating your emails to other software that you use for your work, such as project management tools, Evernote and others. This way, your less important emails will not crowd other emails.

C. Eliminate

Another way of managing your inbox is by cutting out email completely. You can do so in the following ways:

14. Outsource

You can hire a virtual assistant to attend to your emails, so that you get more time to focus on other important tasks.

15. Use other communication tools

You can substitute email with apps like WhatsApp or Slack as such are more streamlined and elicit faster responses.

In conclusion

Email is important but if it begins to take over your day, you can do a lot to change the way you work.

It is not unheard of for people to cut off email completely. Sometimes other forms of communication can be more efficient and you should embrace them.

–

Author bio: Jenny Richard is a writer and database expert at http://remotedba.com/. She works at a Remote DBA Expert firm. She likes to share knowledge and points of view with others.

JUST™ Creative

15 Aug

The ABC of Email Management: 15 Email Tools and Tricks That Will Help You Improve Your Productivity

by TBSCategories: News

This article has been contributed by Jenny Richard.

We all wish we had more time to finish our daily workload, but the fact is, you can never have enough time at work, especially when your inbox is always full.

Email management is one of the most time consuming tasks. It is also strenuous and sometimes quite boring. However, even with these downsides, the usefulness of email as a communication tool at work cannot be understated. What you remain to do then, is to learn to manage your emails so that you stay productive throughout the day.

There are a few handy tools (hacks, if you may) that can assist to make your email management easier. These tools and tricks fall in three broad categories and they include:

A. Restrict

One of the easiest ways to manage your emails is to control your actions on new emails. You can do so as follows:

1. Restrict email response to certain times

To avoid spending your whole day reading countless emails, you can use add-ons like Leech Block on Firefox, or Stay Focused on Chrome, to restrict access to your inbox to certain times a day. When you set your schedule, and stick to it, you will find that you are getting through a lot more work within a few hours.

You should also remember to disable all notifications on all your gadgets, so that they don’t distract you.

2. Work with time limits

Besides just creating a schedule for reading your emails, you should also limit the time you take attending to your emails.

Using a Chrome add-on such as Time Warp will help to stick to your time restrictions. Time Warp is great because when your set time limit for the day has elapsed, it will not allow you to access your inbox again, but will always redirect you to your documents in Google docs.

A reasonable time for attending to emails is between 1 hour and 2 hours.

3. Unsubscribe from unnecessary services

Nowadays, everyone wants you to subscribe to newsletter service or such other email subscription. If you notice that you never read any of these subscriptions, you should unsubscribe because they are only adding clutter to your inbox.

When you stop getting too many subscription emails, you will notice all your important emails a lot easier. Use Unroll.me to clean up your email subscriptions.

4. Send short replies

Don’t waste time sending lengthy email replies. Take some time to think about one to three lines that will summarize all the important points you want to pass across. This will save you and the recipient a lot of time.

5. Take time to respond

Do not be hasty with your email replies. When you take time to reply to emails, you will often measure your replies. You will also address all the points raised by the sender.

When you respond immediately, you are likely to get caught up in a long chain of received and sent emails, and this will only waste your time.

6. Avoid sending unnecessary emails

Do not hold conversations on email, such as discussions on planned meetings, as they often tend to be open-ended and will result in long emails.

Walk to your colleague’s desk and agree on a suitable meeting time or use a messaging app, then when you both agree, you can send one email to book a meeting.

7. Clear your inbox daily

If you work within deadlines, you can clear all your emails in your inbox at the end of each day and at the end of each week.

All you need to do is to prioritize. Reply to all those emails you deem urgent and archive or delete the rest. If you start your day with yesterday’s backlog, you will get overwhelmed before the week is over.

B. Automate

Another aspect of email management involves building processes that will allow you to act on tasks originating from your inbox a lot faster. To do this, you have to automate your mail process.

8. Recycle your responses

If you find that some of the emails in your inbox are similar on a large extent, reply to them using responses you have already sent to the other almost similar emails.

You could save a couple of minutes per email in this way.

9. Use auto-respond

Customize automatic responses that you can send for different types of emails. A good auto-responder to use is one informing the sender of when they can expect a response from you. This will ease off any unnecessary pressure.

10. Sort emails into folders

All the emails that you get will fall into these groups:

• Emails that do not need you to act on them
• Emails that require a response
• Emails that require a response and action

You can move these three categories in different folders to better prioritize the last 2 categories. Also, set up filters that will sort your email by content, subject line and sender.

11. Track emails that have been opened

If you are sending cold emails and you want to know whether your prospects have read them, you can use software such as bananatag to help you decide which prospects to pursue more aggressively and which ones to de-prioritize.

12. Automate your follow up process

There are tools, such as followup.cc, that will automate all your follow-up tasks. If you don’t automate, you are bound to forget about important projects.

13. Incorporate email with other software

A tool like Zapier can help you to better track emails related to projects, by integrating your emails to other software that you use for your work, such as project management tools, Evernote and others. This way, your less important emails will not crowd other emails.

C. Eliminate

Another way of managing your inbox is by cutting out email completely. You can do so in the following ways:

14. Outsource

You can hire a virtual assistant to attend to your emails, so that you get more time to focus on other important tasks.

15. Use other communication tools

You can substitute email with apps like WhatsApp or Slack as such are more streamlined and elicit faster responses.

In conclusion

Email is important but if it begins to take over your day, you can do a lot to change the way you work.

It is not unheard of for people to cut off email completely. Sometimes other forms of communication can be more efficient and you should embrace them.

–

Author bio: Jenny Richard is a writer and database expert at http://remotedba.com/. She works at a Remote DBA Expert firm. She likes to share knowledge and points of view with others.

JUST™ Creative

15 Aug

The ABC of Email Management: 15 Email Tools and Tricks That Will Help You Improve Your Productivity

by TBSCategories: News

This article has been contributed by Jenny Richard.

We all wish we had more time to finish our daily workload, but the fact is, you can never have enough time at work, especially when your inbox is always full.

Email management is one of the most time consuming tasks. It is also strenuous and sometimes quite boring. However, even with these downsides, the usefulness of email as a communication tool at work cannot be understated. What you remain to do then, is to learn to manage your emails so that you stay productive throughout the day.

There are a few handy tools (hacks, if you may) that can assist to make your email management easier. These tools and tricks fall in three broad categories and they include:

A. Restrict

One of the easiest ways to manage your emails is to control your actions on new emails. You can do so as follows:

1. Restrict email response to certain times

To avoid spending your whole day reading countless emails, you can use add-ons like Leech Block on Firefox, or Stay Focused on Chrome, to restrict access to your inbox to certain times a day. When you set your schedule, and stick to it, you will find that you are getting through a lot more work within a few hours.

You should also remember to disable all notifications on all your gadgets, so that they don’t distract you.

2. Work with time limits

Besides just creating a schedule for reading your emails, you should also limit the time you take attending to your emails.

Using a Chrome add-on such as Time Warp will help to stick to your time restrictions. Time Warp is great because when your set time limit for the day has elapsed, it will not allow you to access your inbox again, but will always redirect you to your documents in Google docs.

A reasonable time for attending to emails is between 1 hour and 2 hours.

3. Unsubscribe from unnecessary services

Nowadays, everyone wants you to subscribe to newsletter service or such other email subscription. If you notice that you never read any of these subscriptions, you should unsubscribe because they are only adding clutter to your inbox.

When you stop getting too many subscription emails, you will notice all your important emails a lot easier. Use Unroll.me to clean up your email subscriptions.

4. Send short replies

Don’t waste time sending lengthy email replies. Take some time to think about one to three lines that will summarize all the important points you want to pass across. This will save you and the recipient a lot of time.

5. Take time to respond

Do not be hasty with your email replies. When you take time to reply to emails, you will often measure your replies. You will also address all the points raised by the sender.

When you respond immediately, you are likely to get caught up in a long chain of received and sent emails, and this will only waste your time.

6. Avoid sending unnecessary emails

Do not hold conversations on email, such as discussions on planned meetings, as they often tend to be open-ended and will result in long emails.

Walk to your colleague’s desk and agree on a suitable meeting time or use a messaging app, then when you both agree, you can send one email to book a meeting.

7. Clear your inbox daily

If you work within deadlines, you can clear all your emails in your inbox at the end of each day and at the end of each week.

All you need to do is to prioritize. Reply to all those emails you deem urgent and archive or delete the rest. If you start your day with yesterday’s backlog, you will get overwhelmed before the week is over.

B. Automate

Another aspect of email management involves building processes that will allow you to act on tasks originating from your inbox a lot faster. To do this, you have to automate your mail process.

8. Recycle your responses

If you find that some of the emails in your inbox are similar on a large extent, reply to them using responses you have already sent to the other almost similar emails.

You could save a couple of minutes per email in this way.

9. Use auto-respond

Customize automatic responses that you can send for different types of emails. A good auto-responder to use is one informing the sender of when they can expect a response from you. This will ease off any unnecessary pressure.

10. Sort emails into folders

All the emails that you get will fall into these groups:

• Emails that do not need you to act on them
• Emails that require a response
• Emails that require a response and action

You can move these three categories in different folders to better prioritize the last 2 categories. Also, set up filters that will sort your email by content, subject line and sender.

11. Track emails that have been opened

If you are sending cold emails and you want to know whether your prospects have read them, you can use software such as bananatag to help you decide which prospects to pursue more aggressively and which ones to de-prioritize.

12. Automate your follow up process

There are tools, such as followup.cc, that will automate all your follow-up tasks. If you don’t automate, you are bound to forget about important projects.

13. Incorporate email with other software

A tool like Zapier can help you to better track emails related to projects, by integrating your emails to other software that you use for your work, such as project management tools, Evernote and others. This way, your less important emails will not crowd other emails.

C. Eliminate

Another way of managing your inbox is by cutting out email completely. You can do so in the following ways:

14. Outsource

You can hire a virtual assistant to attend to your emails, so that you get more time to focus on other important tasks.

15. Use other communication tools

You can substitute email with apps like WhatsApp or Slack as such are more streamlined and elicit faster responses.

In conclusion

Email is important but if it begins to take over your day, you can do a lot to change the way you work.

It is not unheard of for people to cut off email completely. Sometimes other forms of communication can be more efficient and you should embrace them.

–

Author bio: Jenny Richard is a writer and database expert at http://remotedba.com/. She works at a Remote DBA Expert firm. She likes to share knowledge and points of view with others.

JUST™ Creative

14 Aug

The ABC of Email Management: 15 Email Tools and Tricks That Will Help You Improve Your Productivity

by TBSCategories: News

This article has been contributed by Jenny Richard.

We all wish we had more time to finish our daily workload, but the fact is, you can never have enough time at work, especially when your inbox is always full.

Email management is one of the most time consuming tasks. It is also strenuous and sometimes quite boring. However, even with these downsides, the usefulness of email as a communication tool at work cannot be understated. What you remain to do then, is to learn to manage your emails so that you stay productive throughout the day.

There are a few handy tools (hacks, if you may) that can assist to make your email management easier. These tools and tricks fall in three broad categories and they include:

A. Restrict

One of the easiest ways to manage your emails is to control your actions on new emails. You can do so as follows:

1. Restrict email response to certain times

To avoid spending your whole day reading countless emails, you can use add-ons like Leech Block on Firefox, or Stay Focused on Chrome, to restrict access to your inbox to certain times a day. When you set your schedule, and stick to it, you will find that you are getting through a lot more work within a few hours.

You should also remember to disable all notifications on all your gadgets, so that they don’t distract you.

2. Work with time limits

Besides just creating a schedule for reading your emails, you should also limit the time you take attending to your emails.

Using a Chrome add-on such as Time Warp will help to stick to your time restrictions. Time Warp is great because when your set time limit for the day has elapsed, it will not allow you to access your inbox again, but will always redirect you to your documents in Google docs.

A reasonable time for attending to emails is between 1 hour and 2 hours.

3. Unsubscribe from unnecessary services

Nowadays, everyone wants you to subscribe to newsletter service or such other email subscription. If you notice that you never read any of these subscriptions, you should unsubscribe because they are only adding clutter to your inbox.

When you stop getting too many subscription emails, you will notice all your important emails a lot easier. Use Unroll.me to clean up your email subscriptions.

4. Send short replies

Don’t waste time sending lengthy email replies. Take some time to think about one to three lines that will summarize all the important points you want to pass across. This will save you and the recipient a lot of time.

5. Take time to respond

Do not be hasty with your email replies. When you take time to reply to emails, you will often measure your replies. You will also address all the points raised by the sender.

When you respond immediately, you are likely to get caught up in a long chain of received and sent emails, and this will only waste your time.

6. Avoid sending unnecessary emails

Do not hold conversations on email, such as discussions on planned meetings, as they often tend to be open-ended and will result in long emails.

Walk to your colleague’s desk and agree on a suitable meeting time or use a messaging app, then when you both agree, you can send one email to book a meeting.

7. Clear your inbox daily

If you work within deadlines, you can clear all your emails in your inbox at the end of each day and at the end of each week.

All you need to do is to prioritize. Reply to all those emails you deem urgent and archive or delete the rest. If you start your day with yesterday’s backlog, you will get overwhelmed before the week is over.

B. Automate

Another aspect of email management involves building processes that will allow you to act on tasks originating from your inbox a lot faster. To do this, you have to automate your mail process.

8. Recycle your responses

If you find that some of the emails in your inbox are similar on a large extent, reply to them using responses you have already sent to the other almost similar emails.

You could save a couple of minutes per email in this way.

9. Use auto-respond

Customize automatic responses that you can send for different types of emails. A good auto-responder to use is one informing the sender of when they can expect a response from you. This will ease off any unnecessary pressure.

10. Sort emails into folders

All the emails that you get will fall into these groups:

• Emails that do not need you to act on them
• Emails that require a response
• Emails that require a response and action

You can move these three categories in different folders to better prioritize the last 2 categories. Also, set up filters that will sort your email by content, subject line and sender.

11. Track emails that have been opened

If you are sending cold emails and you want to know whether your prospects have read them, you can use software such as bananatag to help you decide which prospects to pursue more aggressively and which ones to de-prioritize.

12. Automate your follow up process

There are tools, such as followup.cc, that will automate all your follow-up tasks. If you don’t automate, you are bound to forget about important projects.

13. Incorporate email with other software

A tool like Zapier can help you to better track emails related to projects, by integrating your emails to other software that you use for your work, such as project management tools, Evernote and others. This way, your less important emails will not crowd other emails.

C. Eliminate

Another way of managing your inbox is by cutting out email completely. You can do so in the following ways:

14. Outsource

You can hire a virtual assistant to attend to your emails, so that you get more time to focus on other important tasks.

15. Use other communication tools

You can substitute email with apps like WhatsApp or Slack as such are more streamlined and elicit faster responses.

In conclusion

Email is important but if it begins to take over your day, you can do a lot to change the way you work.

It is not unheard of for people to cut off email completely. Sometimes other forms of communication can be more efficient and you should embrace them.

–

Author bio: Jenny Richard is a writer and database expert at http://remotedba.com/. She works at a Remote DBA Expert firm. She likes to share knowledge and points of view with others.

JUST™ Creative

14 Aug

The ABC of Email Management: 15 Email Tools and Tricks That Will Help You Improve Your Productivity

by TBSCategories: News

This article has been contributed by Jenny Richard.

We all wish we had more time to finish our daily workload, but the fact is, you can never have enough time at work, especially when your inbox is always full.

Email management is one of the most time consuming tasks. It is also strenuous and sometimes quite boring. However, even with these downsides, the usefulness of email as a communication tool at work cannot be understated. What you remain to do then, is to learn to manage your emails so that you stay productive throughout the day.

There are a few handy tools (hacks, if you may) that can assist to make your email management easier. These tools and tricks fall in three broad categories and they include:

A. Restrict

One of the easiest ways to manage your emails is to control your actions on new emails. You can do so as follows:

1. Restrict email response to certain times

To avoid spending your whole day reading countless emails, you can use add-ons like Leech Block on Firefox, or Stay Focused on Chrome, to restrict access to your inbox to certain times a day. When you set your schedule, and stick to it, you will find that you are getting through a lot more work within a few hours.

You should also remember to disable all notifications on all your gadgets, so that they don’t distract you.

2. Work with time limits

Besides just creating a schedule for reading your emails, you should also limit the time you take attending to your emails.

Using a Chrome add-on such as Time Warp will help to stick to your time restrictions. Time Warp is great because when your set time limit for the day has elapsed, it will not allow you to access your inbox again, but will always redirect you to your documents in Google docs.

A reasonable time for attending to emails is between 1 hour and 2 hours.

3. Unsubscribe from unnecessary services

Nowadays, everyone wants you to subscribe to newsletter service or such other email subscription. If you notice that you never read any of these subscriptions, you should unsubscribe because they are only adding clutter to your inbox.

When you stop getting too many subscription emails, you will notice all your important emails a lot easier. Use Unroll.me to clean up your email subscriptions.

4. Send short replies

Don’t waste time sending lengthy email replies. Take some time to think about one to three lines that will summarize all the important points you want to pass across. This will save you and the recipient a lot of time.

5. Take time to respond

Do not be hasty with your email replies. When you take time to reply to emails, you will often measure your replies. You will also address all the points raised by the sender.

When you respond immediately, you are likely to get caught up in a long chain of received and sent emails, and this will only waste your time.

6. Avoid sending unnecessary emails

Do not hold conversations on email, such as discussions on planned meetings, as they often tend to be open-ended and will result in long emails.

Walk to your colleague’s desk and agree on a suitable meeting time or use a messaging app, then when you both agree, you can send one email to book a meeting.

7. Clear your inbox daily

If you work within deadlines, you can clear all your emails in your inbox at the end of each day and at the end of each week.

All you need to do is to prioritize. Reply to all those emails you deem urgent and archive or delete the rest. If you start your day with yesterday’s backlog, you will get overwhelmed before the week is over.

B. Automate

Another aspect of email management involves building processes that will allow you to act on tasks originating from your inbox a lot faster. To do this, you have to automate your mail process.

8. Recycle your responses

If you find that some of the emails in your inbox are similar on a large extent, reply to them using responses you have already sent to the other almost similar emails.

You could save a couple of minutes per email in this way.

9. Use auto-respond

Customize automatic responses that you can send for different types of emails. A good auto-responder to use is one informing the sender of when they can expect a response from you. This will ease off any unnecessary pressure.

10. Sort emails into folders

All the emails that you get will fall into these groups:

• Emails that do not need you to act on them
• Emails that require a response
• Emails that require a response and action

You can move these three categories in different folders to better prioritize the last 2 categories. Also, set up filters that will sort your email by content, subject line and sender.

11. Track emails that have been opened

If you are sending cold emails and you want to know whether your prospects have read them, you can use software such as bananatag to help you decide which prospects to pursue more aggressively and which ones to de-prioritize.

12. Automate your follow up process

There are tools, such as followup.cc, that will automate all your follow-up tasks. If you don’t automate, you are bound to forget about important projects.

13. Incorporate email with other software

A tool like Zapier can help you to better track emails related to projects, by integrating your emails to other software that you use for your work, such as project management tools, Evernote and others. This way, your less important emails will not crowd other emails.

C. Eliminate

Another way of managing your inbox is by cutting out email completely. You can do so in the following ways:

14. Outsource

You can hire a virtual assistant to attend to your emails, so that you get more time to focus on other important tasks.

15. Use other communication tools

You can substitute email with apps like WhatsApp or Slack as such are more streamlined and elicit faster responses.

In conclusion

Email is important but if it begins to take over your day, you can do a lot to change the way you work.

It is not unheard of for people to cut off email completely. Sometimes other forms of communication can be more efficient and you should embrace them.

–

Author bio: Jenny Richard is a writer and database expert at http://remotedba.com/. She works at a Remote DBA Expert firm. She likes to share knowledge and points of view with others.

JUST™ Creative

13 Aug

The ABC of Email Management: 15 Email Tools and Tricks That Will Help You Improve Your Productivity

by TBSCategories: News

This article has been contributed by Jenny Richard.

We all wish we had more time to finish our daily workload, but the fact is, you can never have enough time at work, especially when your inbox is always full.

Email management is one of the most time consuming tasks. It is also strenuous and sometimes quite boring. However, even with these downsides, the usefulness of email as a communication tool at work cannot be understated. What you remain to do then, is to learn to manage your emails so that you stay productive throughout the day.

There are a few handy tools (hacks, if you may) that can assist to make your email management easier. These tools and tricks fall in three broad categories and they include:

A. Restrict

One of the easiest ways to manage your emails is to control your actions on new emails. You can do so as follows:

1. Restrict email response to certain times

To avoid spending your whole day reading countless emails, you can use add-ons like Leech Block on Firefox, or Stay Focused on Chrome, to restrict access to your inbox to certain times a day. When you set your schedule, and stick to it, you will find that you are getting through a lot more work within a few hours.

You should also remember to disable all notifications on all your gadgets, so that they don’t distract you.

2. Work with time limits

Besides just creating a schedule for reading your emails, you should also limit the time you take attending to your emails.

Using a Chrome add-on such as Time Warp will help to stick to your time restrictions. Time Warp is great because when your set time limit for the day has elapsed, it will not allow you to access your inbox again, but will always redirect you to your documents in Google docs.

A reasonable time for attending to emails is between 1 hour and 2 hours.

3. Unsubscribe from unnecessary services

Nowadays, everyone wants you to subscribe to newsletter service or such other email subscription. If you notice that you never read any of these subscriptions, you should unsubscribe because they are only adding clutter to your inbox.

When you stop getting too many subscription emails, you will notice all your important emails a lot easier. Use Unroll.me to clean up your email subscriptions.

4. Send short replies

Don’t waste time sending lengthy email replies. Take some time to think about one to three lines that will summarize all the important points you want to pass across. This will save you and the recipient a lot of time.

5. Take time to respond

Do not be hasty with your email replies. When you take time to reply to emails, you will often measure your replies. You will also address all the points raised by the sender.

When you respond immediately, you are likely to get caught up in a long chain of received and sent emails, and this will only waste your time.

6. Avoid sending unnecessary emails

Do not hold conversations on email, such as discussions on planned meetings, as they often tend to be open-ended and will result in long emails.

Walk to your colleague’s desk and agree on a suitable meeting time or use a messaging app, then when you both agree, you can send one email to book a meeting.

7. Clear your inbox daily

If you work within deadlines, you can clear all your emails in your inbox at the end of each day and at the end of each week.

All you need to do is to prioritize. Reply to all those emails you deem urgent and archive or delete the rest. If you start your day with yesterday’s backlog, you will get overwhelmed before the week is over.

B. Automate

Another aspect of email management involves building processes that will allow you to act on tasks originating from your inbox a lot faster. To do this, you have to automate your mail process.

8. Recycle your responses

If you find that some of the emails in your inbox are similar on a large extent, reply to them using responses you have already sent to the other almost similar emails.

You could save a couple of minutes per email in this way.

9. Use auto-respond

Customize automatic responses that you can send for different types of emails. A good auto-responder to use is one informing the sender of when they can expect a response from you. This will ease off any unnecessary pressure.

10. Sort emails into folders

All the emails that you get will fall into these groups:

• Emails that do not need you to act on them
• Emails that require a response
• Emails that require a response and action

You can move these three categories in different folders to better prioritize the last 2 categories. Also, set up filters that will sort your email by content, subject line and sender.

11. Track emails that have been opened

If you are sending cold emails and you want to know whether your prospects have read them, you can use software such as bananatag to help you decide which prospects to pursue more aggressively and which ones to de-prioritize.

12. Automate your follow up process

There are tools, such as followup.cc, that will automate all your follow-up tasks. If you don’t automate, you are bound to forget about important projects.

13. Incorporate email with other software

A tool like Zapier can help you to better track emails related to projects, by integrating your emails to other software that you use for your work, such as project management tools, Evernote and others. This way, your less important emails will not crowd other emails.

C. Eliminate

Another way of managing your inbox is by cutting out email completely. You can do so in the following ways:

14. Outsource

You can hire a virtual assistant to attend to your emails, so that you get more time to focus on other important tasks.

15. Use other communication tools

You can substitute email with apps like WhatsApp or Slack as such are more streamlined and elicit faster responses.

In conclusion

Email is important but if it begins to take over your day, you can do a lot to change the way you work.

It is not unheard of for people to cut off email completely. Sometimes other forms of communication can be more efficient and you should embrace them.

–

Author bio: Jenny Richard is a writer and database expert at http://remotedba.com/. She works at a Remote DBA Expert firm. She likes to share knowledge and points of view with others.

JUST™ Creative

12 Aug

The ABC of Email Management: 15 Email Tools and Tricks That Will Help You Improve Your Productivity

by TBSCategories: News

This article has been contributed by Jenny Richard.

We all wish we had more time to finish our daily workload, but the fact is, you can never have enough time at work, especially when your inbox is always full.

Email management is one of the most time consuming tasks. It is also strenuous and sometimes quite boring. However, even with these downsides, the usefulness of email as a communication tool at work cannot be understated. What you remain to do then, is to learn to manage your emails so that you stay productive throughout the day.

There are a few handy tools (hacks, if you may) that can assist to make your email management easier. These tools and tricks fall in three broad categories and they include:

A. Restrict

One of the easiest ways to manage your emails is to control your actions on new emails. You can do so as follows:

1. Restrict email response to certain times

To avoid spending your whole day reading countless emails, you can use add-ons like Leech Block on Firefox, or Stay Focused on Chrome, to restrict access to your inbox to certain times a day. When you set your schedule, and stick to it, you will find that you are getting through a lot more work within a few hours.

You should also remember to disable all notifications on all your gadgets, so that they don’t distract you.

2. Work with time limits

Besides just creating a schedule for reading your emails, you should also limit the time you take attending to your emails.

Using a Chrome add-on such as Time Warp will help to stick to your time restrictions. Time Warp is great because when your set time limit for the day has elapsed, it will not allow you to access your inbox again, but will always redirect you to your documents in Google docs.

A reasonable time for attending to emails is between 1 hour and 2 hours.

3. Unsubscribe from unnecessary services

Nowadays, everyone wants you to subscribe to newsletter service or such other email subscription. If you notice that you never read any of these subscriptions, you should unsubscribe because they are only adding clutter to your inbox.

When you stop getting too many subscription emails, you will notice all your important emails a lot easier. Use Unroll.me to clean up your email subscriptions.

4. Send short replies

Don’t waste time sending lengthy email replies. Take some time to think about one to three lines that will summarize all the important points you want to pass across. This will save you and the recipient a lot of time.

5. Take time to respond

Do not be hasty with your email replies. When you take time to reply to emails, you will often measure your replies. You will also address all the points raised by the sender.

When you respond immediately, you are likely to get caught up in a long chain of received and sent emails, and this will only waste your time.

6. Avoid sending unnecessary emails

Do not hold conversations on email, such as discussions on planned meetings, as they often tend to be open-ended and will result in long emails.

Walk to your colleague’s desk and agree on a suitable meeting time or use a messaging app, then when you both agree, you can send one email to book a meeting.

7. Clear your inbox daily

If you work within deadlines, you can clear all your emails in your inbox at the end of each day and at the end of each week.

All you need to do is to prioritize. Reply to all those emails you deem urgent and archive or delete the rest. If you start your day with yesterday’s backlog, you will get overwhelmed before the week is over.

B. Automate

Another aspect of email management involves building processes that will allow you to act on tasks originating from your inbox a lot faster. To do this, you have to automate your mail process.

8. Recycle your responses

If you find that some of the emails in your inbox are similar on a large extent, reply to them using responses you have already sent to the other almost similar emails.

You could save a couple of minutes per email in this way.

9. Use auto-respond

Customize automatic responses that you can send for different types of emails. A good auto-responder to use is one informing the sender of when they can expect a response from you. This will ease off any unnecessary pressure.

10. Sort emails into folders

All the emails that you get will fall into these groups:

• Emails that do not need you to act on them
• Emails that require a response
• Emails that require a response and action

You can move these three categories in different folders to better prioritize the last 2 categories. Also, set up filters that will sort your email by content, subject line and sender.

11. Track emails that have been opened

If you are sending cold emails and you want to know whether your prospects have read them, you can use software such as bananatag to help you decide which prospects to pursue more aggressively and which ones to de-prioritize.

12. Automate your follow up process

There are tools, such as followup.cc, that will automate all your follow-up tasks. If you don’t automate, you are bound to forget about important projects.

13. Incorporate email with other software

A tool like Zapier can help you to better track emails related to projects, by integrating your emails to other software that you use for your work, such as project management tools, Evernote and others. This way, your less important emails will not crowd other emails.

C. Eliminate

Another way of managing your inbox is by cutting out email completely. You can do so in the following ways:

14. Outsource

You can hire a virtual assistant to attend to your emails, so that you get more time to focus on other important tasks.

15. Use other communication tools

You can substitute email with apps like WhatsApp or Slack as such are more streamlined and elicit faster responses.

In conclusion

Email is important but if it begins to take over your day, you can do a lot to change the way you work.

It is not unheard of for people to cut off email completely. Sometimes other forms of communication can be more efficient and you should embrace them.

–

Author bio: Jenny Richard is a writer and database expert at http://remotedba.com/. She works at a Remote DBA Expert firm. She likes to share knowledge and points of view with others.

JUST™ Creative

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